Cleaning compositions nowadays come in a number of product forms, such as granules, liquids and tablets, each form having its advantages and disadvantages.
Recently, tablets have gained renewed interest, mainly because they are easy to handle for the consumer and easy to dose (‘unit dose’). To make tablets storage stable and to prevent breakage of the tablets during handling, the ingredients need to be strongly compressed together and generally binding agents are needed to ensure the tablets do not break. This can reduce their solubility and dispersibility which is undesirable for the consumers, both from a performance point of view and from a machine or fabric residue point of view.
Thus, alternative ways and better ways to provide easy to handle, unit dose products which do not dust or break, but dissolve complete and fast, are desirable.
The inventors have now found an improved method to make a product addressing the above problems, namely by incorporating a product, in particular solid products, in a (partially) water-soluble or -disintegrating or -dispersable pouch in a specific way, such that the above requirements are fulfilled.
Pouches for detergents as such are known in the art to be useful to provide unit dose compositions to be delivered to the wash. They typically are described as bag-shape pouches, loosely containing the product. These pouches can be made of water permeable material or water-soluble material. However, the solubility of these pouched products is not always satisfactory.
The inventors have now found improved pouched compositions with improved dissolution, namely pouched compositions having a compartment made from stretchable water-soluble, water-dispersible or water-disintegrating material of non-uniform thickness, this material being stretched around the particulate component (of the composition) in the compartment. The component of the compositions, and preferably the composition as a whole, is thus typically tightly enclosed in the compartment. Preferred is that at least one component or preferably the composition as a whole is particulate. This way of incorporating the component in a compartment (and of incorporating a composition in a pouch) results in an improved and/or controlled dissolution in water, e.g. faster and/or more complete, time-controlled, whilst the pouched composition is storage stable. It is believed that due to the compartment having a non-uniform thickness and being tightly pressed against the component or composition as a whole, the water penetrates through or dissolves quickly the compartment material, in particularly the thinnest part thereof, whilst during storage the remaining of the material of the compartment is still suitable to protect the product against moisture.
Moreover, because the component is tightly enclosed, improved stability upon storage is achieved, because reduced interaction of the ingredients in the component is achieved, similar to compacted tablets. When the component or the composition as a whole is particulate and incorporated by the method of the invention, the component and also the composition remains free-flowing, unlike tablets, and therefor, the dissolution of the components, and composition, into the wash water is much better.
Furthermore, improved process are provided to form the pouched composition as described above, such that the component of the composition is enclosed by a stretched, non-uniform compartment material.